Trope-a-Day: Deus Est Machina

Deus Est Machina: Done deliberately and intentionally.  When you build a recursively self-improving seed AI, the kind that turns into, in the lingo, a “weakly godlike superintelligence”, then you have to know that you’re committing a willful act of theogeny, right there.  Doubly so when you’re building a collective hyperconsciousness out of shards of everyone’s brains at the same time (see: Hive Mind, Touched By Vorlons), and upload the “souls” (mind-states) of the dead into it.  Lampshaded in internal context when your new e-deity decides the archetypal masks of your mythological deities make nice hats to wear for various pieces of its internal architecture.

Further lampshaded with the God of War-class hyperdreadnought (that’s one better than super).  When it turns up somewhere, it really does mean that Dúréníän, archai-slash-eikone of righteous war, battle, conquest, strategy, tactics, and the sentinel darëssef is taking the field personally to kick your ass.